Cold Start Problem - Publications - Faculty & Research

17 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

Where Did My Shopping Mall Go?

that's really where the problem lies. Q: We've seen this phenomenon recently where wages are stagnating or declining What are the retail implications of a shrinking or bifurcating middle class? Alvarez: Traditionally the US economy has... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

23 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Break Your Addiction to Service Heroes

client-facing people when service problems are systematically tolerated. The cape starts to feel heavy when it's overused. Great service, it turns out, is not made possible by running the business harder and... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Service

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

Tackling Climate Change Will Cost Less Than We Think

No one knows how much it will cost to keep the risks of significant climate disruption to a reasonable level. One commonly cited estimate puts the cost at roughly 1 percent of world GDP a year, or about $840 billion. This is a large number, but it seems smaller when... View Details

Keywords: by Rebecca Henderson; Energy; Utilities

30 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

Use the Psychology of Pricing To Keep Customers Returning

be considered when starting out? Gourville: The first things managers need to do is to realize that price is multi-faceted. It's not just about "What price do I charge?" It's also very much about "How do I charge?"... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

05 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

The Ten Deadly Mistakes of Wanna-Dots

extremely hard to do. Worse yet, it doesn't work. The bulldog doesn't suddenly become beautiful because it was forced to wear lipstick. Nothing else about the bulldog or its behavior has changed. It makes the bulldog angry. And the use of cosmetics just covers up View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

04 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead?

insane, or what? Q: But to say these groups are killing their patients is pretty strong language. A: Well, 300,000 people die every 3 years in hospitals, not with the problems that brought them in. What killed these 300,000 people? It's... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

22 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles, Papers of the Decade

subsequent cognition. Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship Published: December 3, 2008 All else equal, a venture-capital-backed entrepreneur who starts a company that goes public has a 30 percent chance of succeeding in his or her... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

21 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Don’t Get Buried in Customer Data—Use It

launches an initiative to solve this problem and identifies the number of spare power supply parts it sends out weekly as the measure it will use to track the progress. The transactional measure—the number of spare parts shipped... View Details

Keywords: by Jean Ayers

02 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 2

Leaders of organizations in the social sector are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. We review the debates around performance and impact, drawing on three literatures:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

23 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 23

Actually, the CEO cannot make most decisions, or even review them. The CEO is powerful, but multiple constituencies can exercise power as well, starting with the board. The shortening CEO tenure reveals that many leaders misunderstand the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

05 Apr 2021
What Do You Think?

Why Can’t More Leaders Teach?

leaders who are considered for teaching appointments actually qualify. He attributes this mainly to issues with “status and ego.” In my experience, the problem often was the inability to listen to what MBA students were really saying. I... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

20 Jan 2015
First Look

First Look: January 20

diplomacy, are not innate talents but can be learned. It lists problems that research has shown often occur in the process of seeking or giving advice, including being overconfident about one's own perspective, failing to seek advice from... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Advertising: It’s Not ‘Mad Men’ Anymore

years: unbundling of agency services, the problem of competing clients sharing a common agency, and concern over consolidation with the growth of holding companies. To understand them, it's first important to appreciate how advertising... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Advertising

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: The Business of Crowdsourcing

Gaining the community's trust is vital to building a successful business with crowdsourcing, agreed business leaders at the Digital Initiative Summit at Harvard Business School on March 30. When Tongal got its start in 2009, some members... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

08 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Everything Must Go: A Strategy for Store Liquidation

the birth and midlife phases of business products and ideas," Raman observes. "We don't spend enough time thinking about the death or liquidation of businesses. What drew us to this problem is that death, or the process of... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

27 Jul 2019
Op-Ed

Does Facebook's Business Model Threaten Our Elections?

on investment of the targeted ad model they’ve perfected is far superior to traditional advertising. Both Google and Facebook have an effective duopoly on digital advertising, though Amazon is starting to put up meaningful numbers. As... View Details

Keywords: by George Riedel

21 Nov 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, November 21, 2017

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53512 Online Network Revenue Management Using Thompson Sampling By: Ferreira, Kris Johnson, David Simchi-Levi, and He Wang Abstract—We consider a price-based network revenue management View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 May 2013
Research & Ideas

A Company’s Evolving View of Gender Equity

was selected as the start point for two reasons: First, it was when the CEO of BigAC observed that less than 10 percent of the candidates for partnership were female—this after a decade of actively recruiting highly qualified women. And... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting

08 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Fix a Broken Marketplace

markets—and how market design made things better. Thickness:A classic example of a thickness problem is the process of helping nephrology patients in need of kidney transplants. In 2006, some 5,000 patients in the United States either... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

18 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The Unseen Link Between Savings and National Growth

much faster than other poor countries with less private savings. Q: You studied Korea as one place where savings led growth. What actions contributed to the evolution of their Total Factor Productivity during the post-war period? A: TFP View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

Publications